


Breaking Point

by Everlind



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 10:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlind/pseuds/Everlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Shishido breaks his leg, his confidence goes with it</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking Point

**Breaking Point**

The sight of his whole left leg -from under his knee all the way down, with just his toes poking out at the end- cast in plaster, is enough to make him want to break things (thought his not other leg, or something. More like chairs and windows and people's faces).

It's the end of the world, Shishido thinks.

"It's not the end of the world," Choutarou says.

Shishido glares at him. He's the one to talk, being _not_ invalid and _not_ crippled and all. And _not_ being _carried_ like little girl.

"And put me down!" he adds, for what must be the bazillionth time. "This is degrading."

Choutarou sighs and shakes his head a little. "Sure. You'll just skip up two stories on your crutches. And break your neck for good measure, too."

And oh, fucking hell, does he have to mention those infernal crutches? He's only walked on them from the hospital to the car and then from the car to the front door of the building and already his armpits are aching and his hands raw. Horrible, evil things. And Oishi (who turns out to be not as nice as Shishido thought him to be, the bastard) told Shishido he was _lucky_ (lucky!!!) that the break was low enough for him to use them. Otherwise it would've been a wheelchair (if that had been the case, he'd have committed seppuku with the needle of his IV).

"I'd manage", he mutters under his breath. He'd have sat down and butted up one step at the time the way little kids mount stairs. It would've worked. Instead Choutarou insists on carrying him (princess-style, the idiot). There had better not be anybody else passing them by in the stairwell.

Eventually Choutarou carries him over the threshold into their apartment (like a goddamn bride), before carefully setting him down on his feet. Well, foot.

Shishido hops like some wacko-out-of-control-hybrid-flamingo-kangaroo-frog-thing-whatever towards the couch himself, but those few jumps hurt like nothing else he's ever experienced before, deep stabbing throbs of wrong. He's sweating from it as he flops on the couch, his hands are shaking even and holy hell he's already missing his morphine drip.

"This sucks," he mutters quietly. Even his hip aches, the pain radiating up from the fracture, it seems, into his whole left side.

"It'll be alright," Choutarou says as he comes walking up to him with an armful of pillows. "Oishi-san said it would heal completely, provided you're careful of course." He adds that last with a look that states plainly that Shishido had better be careful _or else_.

Unable to stop himself, he winces as his leg is lifted and then propped up with the pillows. Right. Keeping it elevated.

He lies back into the armrest of the couch and scowls.

Alright my ass, he thinks.

End of the world and then some.

***

If he thought that was bad, it was before _this_. This, a week later.

The boredom.

The being in constant discomfort.

The _itching_.

And the other thing. The really frustrating other thing.

Really frustrating other thing aside, yesterday he'd dug up an old ruler he used in high school and managed to jam it down his cast to relieve some of the itching. Today he's upgraded it with an unbend coat-hanger (thank you, internet) and has been doing not much else but scratch his leg and stare at the ceiling.

Occasionally Wan-Wan will trot up to him with his heavily beslobbered rubber chicken and Shishido will throw it for him through the doorway of the kitchen. Other than that he just lies there, going half out of his mind, with nothing to look forward to but Choutarou coming home.

His brow starts to ache from scowling and frowning and glaring at nothing particular.

And sure, that's bad and all.

Worse is that when Choutarou comes home, he's not feeling any better or has even begun to resolve the other thing.

"Tadaima!" Choutarou calls out.

"Okaeri," he mutters and struggles to sit up, pushing the dog off his stomach.

His partner swoops down over the back of the couch to kiss him, a warm, soft _there_ press of lips, before pulling back. Shishido's eyes follow the smiling mouth as it withdraws, feeling his stomach go warm and empty and ache.

"Pain?" Choutarou asks with clear concern soaked into the word.

"Wha-?" Shishido tears his eyes up to meet Choutarou's.

"Are you hurting?"

Shishido blinks, then frowns. "No, not really. Sore from lying down, a bit. Why?"

"You looked as though you were," Choutarou tells him. "Do you need anything?"

That nearly makes Shishido burst out into what would have been hysterical laughter. Sometimes it's nothing short of a miracle that Choutarou can read him like a book, but not see something as plain and clear like this. The other thing… it's _him_. Not Choutarou doing something wrong, but something he -they- aren't doing. Admittedly, Shishido has not been in the right mind-set for it and has been in too much pain that he kept the not-doing… well. Not. Doing.

Sex.

Or whatever.

Anything really.

Not to mention he isn't even sure he _can_ \- with that goddamn thing on his leg. Can't move, turn, lift his leg, nothing, just lie flat on his back until his skin feels battered into one big bruise though he barely moves.

And it seems, now that the deepest ache of the pain has receded, that his body is informing him that, hey, you haven't been getting any for longer than a week. It's been like this for just a day or two, but having a lot of time to think about something like that makes it feel like an eternity. Because thinking about the sex you aren't getting isn't really productive to a zen-like state of mind.

Most of all he wants to ask Choutarou, but hasn't, because he worries the maybe-not-being-able-to-go-the-whole-way aspect of the situation might be a turn off. Also there is the business where he can't really lie on his side, or turn much at all really, so that leaves him the way he is now: on his back with minimal ability to move much. And the cast will be like a huge block, lifeless while his broken bone tries to heal itself within, and in the way.

Shishido regards the honest worry he sees on the familiar features, the dark eyes, the handsome face, his friend and lover, before looking down at his hands. The truth?

He doesn't want to disappoint Choutarou.

It's not like he's especially… sexy or something, whatever, having a gimp leg and wearing a t-shirt that could've fit two of him and droopy pajama pants of Choutarou's, a size larger and able to ruck up over the plaster. His hair must look simply ridiculous and his complexion shallow from being inside, his skin stale from lying down and he's never had to worry about that when he was healthy. But now he isn't.

"Ryou?"

Shishido starts. "Yeah?"

"What is it?" Choutarou asks, reaching over to fingercomb his hair into a vague resemblance of order.

For some reason the gentle gesture irritates him more than anything else. He bats the hand away. "Nothing. I'm fine."

He doesn't need to look to know there'll be uncomprehending hurt tightening the corners of Choutarou's eyes. But he's in pain and itches and aches and feels insecure and isn't able to deal with it.

"It's not _nothing_ ," Choutarou says into the startled silence, voice resolute. "I can tell. You're more than just grumpy."

"I'm not grumpy!" Shishido protests, rather indignant, jerking his head around to glare at him.

Choutarou looks at him, long and hard, before twitching one of his brows into the slightest, disbelieving arch. "Of course not," he says, complete dead-pan.

Shishido levels one last annoyed glance at him, before pointedly turning to look away. He can feel, for the longest time, Choutarou staring at the back of his neck. But he doesn't turn around and doesn't give the slightest acknowledgement of the other's presence.

It lasts too long, grows too heavy, before Choutarou sighs, deep and unsteady.

"Fine," he whispers. "Be that way."

***

So Shishido is.

For a whole other week of pure, unadulterated torture.

He knows he deserves to be snubbed, especially when Choutarou has been wringing himself upside-down to make him feel comfortable and happy, but feeling weak is something that simply always goes down like swallowing a pint of pure acid. Worse even, is that Choutarou continues to run around and jump at the merest indication that he needs something. Anything.

Anything but for _that other thing_.

There still is a kiss for him in the morning and when he comes back from work, but just a peck really.

Choutarou is hurt and Shishido isn't talking and the both of them just grow more frustrated at each other.

It doesn't help that being half-angry and frustrated at his partner somehow only adds fuel to the fire when just looking at Choutarou brings every muscle in his body up short, in pained remembrance as a dozen memories of them, together, bash into his head from all sides. The fact that they have sex a lot, doesn't mean they are all about just that. Choutarou waited, longer than any other person would have, for him. Theirs is a connection that goes beyond the physical, so even when he thinks about the actual act, what he sees is dark eyes and swollen lips and the ghost-touch of hands dusting his cheeks. Of being so close it ceases to matter who is doing what, as long as it never ends.

And they aren't doing any of that.

But that cast stays, less than white, written on by friends, written on by family, written on by the only person in his life he's turn over and die for, yet still a mental blockage of endless what-ifs that brings him up short.

Thankfully so, Choutarou is a bit too good to be true.

After a week of insincere politeness, he buckles (when Shishido barks at him for playing piano too loudly, too long, too everything) and bursts out: "Okay. That's it!"

He pushes away from the instrument, slams down the lid with uncharacteristic harshness. Never let it be said that Ohtori Choutarou can't get angry. He can. Very much so. Almost never, but when he does, it is best to take cover.

Pulling away from the gleaming piano, he strides over to Shishido, looms over his supine body on the couch.

"I've had it!" he states, hands on his hips and dark eyes blazing. "What do you want me to do? I can't heal your leg, but I've done everything else and I can understand you're in pain and uncomfortable, but this is just too much! What do you _want_ from me?"

Shishido, quite honestly, hadn't seen this coming. He was cranky and trying to read a book, but the cadence of music had drawn him in, weightlessly amazing, but keeping him from finishing a single damn paragraph. So he snapped, like he had been doing all week, but apparently that had been the drop to flood the bucket and now Choutarou is standing over him, alight like an inferno.

Shishido gropes for a decent, aloof answer, and rather fails. "Nothing! I'm just trying to read this book! And you're being all- all. All."

What?

All what?

Temptingly amazing as he pours his passion into the music, but not into him?

"What?" Choutarou echoes. "I'm being what?"

"Noisy!" Shishido snaps. "I can't concentrate."

Choutarou throws his hands up, presses his lips together, before leaning down over him. A finger pokes into his vision.

"You're lying!" he says softly. "I can tell."

"So?" Shishido bounces back, surging up from the pillows and halting short nose-to-nose. "What of it?"

"Everything!" Choutarou says lowly. "You're not being fair! If you don't tell me what you want, I can't give it to you!"

Shishido opens his mouth, bares his teeth. And says nothing at all. Because right then and there he wants to crumble and scream at Choutarou to give it, everything, anything really, spill himself emotionally into Shishido and leave nothing for himself, even when he's broken. _Despite_ being broken.

He doesn't know what Choutarou sees then, in his eyes, or his mouth. But there's a small pause and then suddenly they're kissing with the pent-up fire and longing of more than two weeks spend nursing guarded hurt. There's teeth on his lips and hands in his hair and a chest against his and he's so, so angry, still. Not at Choutarou but at himself.

So he kisses back, all teeth and hard, gentle lips, tasting his partner the way he himself must taste like; all loneliness and need. There's the wet slick of a tongue sliding along his mouth and he opens up, his mouth, his arms, himself.

"Sorry," he murmurs, head canted back, as that mouth drops inevitably to his neck.

"Why?" Choutarou demands, quite incredulously, voice indistinct against his skin. "Why can't you just ask?"

But he doesn't really care about the answer Shishido can't give him, opting instead to gather him to his chest and lift him off the couch (in princess style. Again.). Like that he stumbles into the bedroom, never even trying to remove his lips from Shishido, nearly walking into the bed before seeing it and laying Shishido down on it. He himself follows.

Choutarou seems to know better than Shishido did. There's no awkward turning and trying to match what won't fit any longer.

They match.

They fit.

Cast or no cast.

Shishido lies on his back, the way he knew he'd have to be, and Choutarou lies tucked against him, propped on an elbow as his fingers tease the edge of his shirt up. They kiss, hungry, but all lips and caresses, breathing each other in. Choutarou's eyes are lidded as he looks down on him.

"I can't-" Shishido gasps, as his shirt comes off, but teeth and and fingers find his torso instead. A hand fists into Choutarou's hair, lifts his busy mouth away for an instant. "I can't," he forces himself to say, again, before they hit that inevitable wall of no options, because he's broken and wrong and burdened by that grubby, itchy block on his left leg.

"So?" Choutarou murmurs, leaning down to kiss him, a peck on his nose, even though Shishido pulls at his hair to keep him focussed. 

There's a smile, slow and full of unsaid emotions.

"At least you can't move," Choutarou goes on to add, grinning. No _smirking_. "I can do anything I want right now. To you. Ryou?"

Shishido realizes he might've just jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

Well.

"Yes?"

Fingers touch his jaw-line, dance up to his mouth, end on the lashes of his shuttered eyes."Can I?"

Shishido laughs, breathless and endlessly relieved, under his breath.

Of course. Only Ohtori Choutarou would threaten to molest him and then follow that up by _asking_ if he's allowed to. That's just the way he is, really. Too good to be true.

Shishido swallows.

And nods.

"You can," he whispers.

  


In the end, Shishido finds out he isn't broken at all.

_-fin-_


End file.
